


Nothing Compares To You

by PreciselyVex (CrashEdit)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 10:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrashEdit/pseuds/PreciselyVex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Let's Write Sherlock, Challenge #3:<br/>"Songfic! Write a story inspired by music."</p><p>I chose Prince's "Nothing Compares 2U", as performed by Sinead O'Connor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUiTQvT0W_0). </p><p>Post Reichenbach, so you know what's coming. Get out your handkerchiefs and have a good cry.</p><p>I will likely submit another, hopefully more upbeat, story for this challenge. But this one welled up out of the blue and demanded to be written, so I complied. </p><p>**Not Beta'd, Not Britpick'd**</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Compares To You

_"How long has it been, John?”_

He leans back in the chair, and gestures uselessly with his hand, as if to imply that he doesn’t know. As if grief has swallowed up his ability to count, to keep track, to cross days off a calendar. As if he’s a prisoner serving a prolonged sentence, who’s already forgotten how to keep track of time.

But there’s no end to _his_ sentence.

Sherlock is dead, and there isn’t anything that anyone can do to change it. Certainly not his doctor, who asks cruel questions like that and calls it “therapy”.

Of course John knows how long it’s been.  He knows exactly how long it’s been. It’s very nearly all he knows anymore…

It’s been seven months and 15 days since they took his love away. Picked his broken, blood-spattered body off the sidewalk and swept him away into Bart’s, away from experiments and crime scenes and 221B. Away from John.

_“How have you been?”_

_“I’m…fine. I’m tired.”_

_“Are you having trouble sleeping?”_

_“No.”_

John isn’t lying. He does sleep. Too much, maybe, he isn’t sure. His sleep schedule is off, though. Nights alone in the flat are hard, so he goes out every night and then ends up sleeping all day. He goes to movies, because it’s easy to hide in the dark. He goes to pubs, but Greg made him stop after he got in that fight. Most nights, though, he just walks. Probably knows more about the streets of London now than he ever did, but he could walk from now until the end of his days and still not know as much about London as Sherlock.

He grows a mustache. It makes him look older. He feels older.

He chose to stay in the flat, despite the empty nights, because as long as he’s there, he can pretend that Sherlock is just in his room, or maybe out on a case, ready to burst through the door at any moment. Mycroft had been kind enough to allow him to stay at 221B, saying the rent was paid up through the end of the year, so he might as well stay.

In February, though, John had asked Mycroft to take Sherlock’s violin, to his house. It broke his heart to see it sitting there, silent, sonatas and concertos and intentionally irritating screeches trapped inside. Mycroft had made a rare visit to the flat, in person, to take it home.

_“Seen Harry lately?”_

_“Yeah. She’s not happy with me.”_

_“Why?”_

_“She thinks I should move out, move on. That it’s time.”_

_“Do you think it’s time?”_

_“Do you?”_

John understands why people want him to move on. It’s because grief makes people uncomfortable. Because if you’ve never lost anyone, you can’t understand that mourning never really ends, it just becomes a part of you. So, yeah, John knows he could go out and do whatever he wants, see whoever he wants, go out and eat dinner in fancy restaurants and put his arms around every man he sees, but it would all be going through the motions. It wouldn’t mean that he was over mourning Sherlock Holmes, because he’ll never be over mourning Sherlock Holmes.

He misses him so much he feels physically ill most of the time, so much that when he does try to work, he has to schedule time between patients so he can cry in his office. He stands in Sherlock’s closet sometimes, just to remember him, to…smell him, but the scent is fading and John isn’t sure what he’ll do when the last of it goes. At the same time John’s so fucking angry with him for doing this, for taking such a coward’s way out, and if he could, he would confront him, face to face, look him straight in the eye and tell him how selfish he was for leaving and how cruel, how incredibly cruel he was to do it in front of him and how all would be fucking forgiven if he would just come home.

Because the fact is, nothing compares to him.

And nothing ever will.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains song lyrics from Prince's "Nothing Compares 2U", as performed by Sinead O'Connor. I do not own these lyrics and they are presented here exclusively as a non-profit fan work.


End file.
